André Holland is a true thespian. He’s played pivotal roles in acclaimed films like Moonlight and Passing, and the Cinemax TV series The Knick. He’s also no stranger to the stage, having starred in a 2018 production of Othello opposite Mark Rylance at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. You can currently witness Holland’s portrayal of Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton in the Apple TV+ limited series The Big Cigar. All episodes are available to stream now.
More: André Holland on portraying Huey P. Newton for The Big Cigar
For his Treat, Holland expresses his admiration for Complicité, an English theater company known for its avant garde productions of The Street of Crocodiles and Mnemonic. He has a personal connection to the company, having participated in workshops that connected him to working with his physicality to find a role.
Under the leadership of actor and director Simon McBurney, Complicité focuses on physical theater and non-verbal storytelling — skillfully blending movement, music, and visuals to create immersive experiences. This approach deeply resonates with Holland and prompts him to reflect on this question: How can I convey a scene or a moment without relying on language?
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This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
At the moment, the thing that's top of mind for me is the work of a company called Theater de Complicité. They are an English company [and] at the moment [they’re] led by a man named Simon McBurney, who is a wonderful actor and also an amazing director. They've made shows like The Street of Crocodiles and Mnemonic. So many amazing works. Their work really, really inspires me.
Simon trained at a school with a man called Jacques Lecoq, who taught at a school in Paris that really focused on the body as the main way into character. And for me, as a young Black man growing up in rural Alabama, trying to find my way into theater and into performance and often feeling isolated and out of place — whether it was working on Ibsen, or Shaw, or Tennessee Williams, or whatever play we were doing at school at the time — [I would] often feel like ‘I'm not sure I belong in this world.’ I don't feel like I can be my full self in this space. And how do I make room for myself in this play? I discovered this work and found it not only to be so beautiful and so profound, but also so freeing. And [it] felt like there was room for me and for many other folks like me in this kind of work.
I love working from a physical place. It frees me up. I mean, I spend a lot of time in my head, in my day to day life, so it's super freeing to just connect with my body and see what it has to offer.
I did a workshop with Complicité recently. It's like, how can you tell us the story of a scene or of a moment without using language? When you train your body to work in that way, I think it really translates beautifully to the screen because I think you're noticing things like that he's not touching this person there, or just the reaction, the way that a word will make a person's body react. I think we, as an audience, don't necessarily know why we understand that, but we do understand it. I think that's been a real big influence on me, that kind of work.